2015 Winter Conferences

* Denotes physicist in charge of
diversity

Single Molecule
Biophysics

This will be the 8th
biennial workshop on Single Molecule
Biophysics (SMB) held at the Aspen Center
for Physics (ACP), building on a
successful series begun in 2001. The SMB
meeting highlights recent progress in the
field of single molecule biophysics, on
both its experimental and theoretical
frontiers. Topics vary somewhat from year
to year. Biological systems covered in
past meetings have included mechanoenzymes
(myosin, kinesin, dynein, ATP synthase,
flagellar motors), nucleic acid-based
enzymes (polymerases, topoisomerases,
helicases, etc.), nucleic acids (DNA &
RNA), and aspects of molecular physiology
(folding & unfolding, binding,
signaling, and other biostructural
changes). Featured experimental techniques
have included fluorescence, optical
trapping, magnetic tweezers, scanned-probe
microscopy, and super-resolution
microscopy. This workshop traditionally
admits a mixture of experimentalists and
theorists. Biologists and physicists with
either newfound or longstanding interests
in biophysics are encouraged to apply: all
levels of accomplishment are welcome. The
meeting features a lively mix of students
and professors. The SMB workshop has been
oversubscribed in the past, so a higher
priority will be assigned to applicants
presenting important new findings who
commit to remain for the duration of the
meeting. In the event of oversubscription,
a limit of two representatives from each
participating scientific group or
collaboration will be adopted. We will
attempt to award each group or
collaboration one short talk based on the
applications submitted. All attendees are
also invited to present posters.
Prospective participants should submit the
following:

A short abstract (<200 words) of the
proposed contribution along with a title,
names, and affiliations of any co-authors.
Abstracts will be ranked and used as a
basis for admission.
-Indicate if you wish the abstract to be
considered for a talk: otherwise, a poster
presentation will be assumed
-Indicate that you intend to attend the
full meeting, if accepted. If a partial
attendance is necessary, please be sure to
state the reason.
In years past, funds have been raised to
help defray a portion of the expenses for
junior participants, or for those
traveling a very long way. Fund-raising
continues and we intend to maintain this
tradition. In addition, one junior
applicant will receive a merit-based
scholarship award from a special endowment
fund for the ACP Winter Meetings.

Biophysics
II
January 11 - 16, 2015

Microscale Ocean
Biophysics

This highly
interdisciplinary meeting will focus on
how physical processes affect aquatic
organisms at small scales, and thereby the
global processes in oceans and lakes that
microorganisms overwhelmingly govern. Over
the past two decades, there has been a
growing realization that the ecology of
these organisms depends not only on the
bulk environmental conditions, but also
crucially on small-scale biophysical
interactions and microscale heterogeneity
in the physical and chemical conditions.
It is becoming clear that physical
processes play a fundamental role in
shaping the microscale landscapes that
form the arena in which these organisms
forage, reproduce and encounter each
other. A key goal of this meeting is to
help advance our understanding of aquatic
ecosystems by replacing current
statistical and heuristic descriptions
with a mechanistic understanding of the
component processes. This cannot be
achieved without a strong appeal to
small-scale fluid physics, mass transport,
active suspensions, turbulence, and
mechanics in general. The result is a rich
landscape of opportunities for physicists,
mathematicians, chemists and engineers to
be involved in oceanographic and
environmental problems, and for
oceanographers, biologists and ecologists
to inspire and utilize physical concepts
and approaches more pervasively. The
vision underpinning this meeting is that
the interdisciplinary application and
advancement of these topics in the context
of oceanographic processes will greatly
improve our understanding of how organism
life is constrained and has evolved to
exploit the fundamental laws of physics.

Astro Physics I
January 17 - 22, 2015

Black Holes in Dense Star
Clusters

Organizers:
Laura Chomiuk, Michigan State University
Andrea Ghez, University of California, Los
Angeles
Vassiliki Kalogera, Northwestern
University
Fred Rasio, Northwestern University
Stein Sigurdsson, Pennsylvania State
University

Exploring the Physics
Frontier with Circular Colliders

The principal goal of
particle physics is to uncover the
fundamental building blocks of matter and
the structure of their interactions. The
most important tools at our disposal are
indirect low-energy probes and direct
probes at the energy frontier. The end of
the first run of the LHC and the beginning
of the higher-energy run is the right
moment to consider the next phase of the
high-energy collider physics program. The
community has already begun planning,
including initiatives at CERN and at IHEP
in China to study the physics case and
technological challenges of building the
next generation machine. Complementary
supporting activities have begun inthe US.
The conference will describe the physics
potential of the upcoming LHC program,
followed by an exploration of all aspects
of the next generation circular machine.

Unifying Concepts in
Glass Physics

Organizers:
Patrick Charbonneau, Duke University
Andrea Liu, University of Pennsylvania
Sharon Glotzer, University of Michigan

This workshop series, Unifying Concepts in
Glass Physics, brings together researchers
conducting theoretical, computational, and
experimental investigations of glassy
systems to discuss and disseminate their
most recent advances. For this edition,
the program will include standard themes,
such as supercooled liquids, structural
glasses, spin glasses, and disordered
systems, as well as interdisciplinary
themes that have emerged in recent years,
such as jamming in colloidal and granular
systems and glassiness in information
theory and in computer science.

Quantum Field Theory
plays a central role in our descriptions
of diverse areas of science, including
condensed matter, particle physics, string
theory, cosmology, and mathematics. While
many significant advances have been made
in recent years in the formal aspects of
QFT and its applications, many open
problems and questions remain, whose
resolution would impact considerably the
way in which we think about strongly
interacting systems. The goal of this
conference is to cover a wide array of
recent advances in quantum field theory,
with a focus on its non-perturbative
properties. Topics will include:

Closing in on the
Cosmological Model

The past twenty years
have been a period of tremendous progress
in cosmology. We now have a simple
cosmological model that fits a host of
observations. Still, many open questions
remain, some of which we may be on the
verge of answering in the near future.
Among these are the mass of neutrinos, the
nature of dark energy, and the nature of
the inflationary paradigm. In the
community-wide effort to answer these
questions, this year promises to be
extraordinary. Several experiments have or
will release results of lasting legacy,
and these experiments should start to
reach the required accuracy to answer some
of these open questions. The purpose of
the Aspen conference will be to assess the
current state of cosmological constraints,
to identify open issues in the
interpretation of these data, and to draw
lessons for the next generation of
experiments.

Non-Equilibrium Quantum
Matter

The quantum dynamics of
many body systems is an unexplored
frontier where new physical laws are
waiting to be revealed. In recent years,
experiments in cold atoms and in
solid-state systems began exploring this
field, with the ability to resolve the
time evolution of complex interacting
quantum systems. On the theoretical side,
new paradigms of correlated dynamical
behavior are seeking the universal aspects
of defect formation, equilibration and
thermalization, as well as localization
effects. Simultaneously, powerful
numerical methods are becoming capable of
exploring such problems in a meaningful
way. The Aspen winter meeting will bring
together the leading practitioners in this
field from these three backgrounds to
discuss the emerging universal laws
governing quantum dynamics of many body
systems.